With all this talk about colonising Mars, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Earth and all its mysteries have been well and truly uncovered by the year 2017.

But as these bizarre lifeforms and the recently reclassified ‘Zealandia’ continent can attest, our planet still harbours a crapload of surprises, because as good as we humans are at exploring, there are still places on Earth that no human in recorded history has ever set foot on – and not for a lack of trying.

In the latest episode of RealLifeLore, we get to explore the most remote and most difficult places to physically travel to on the planet, starting with the Pitcairn Islands – a UK overseas territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s home to just 49 people.

Not only does Pitcairn have an unfathomably small population, it’s also hundreds of kilometres away from its nearest inhabited island.

But don’t let that stop you. As the video below explains, there are plots of land available for purchase in this beautiful tropical paradise, but this is no holiday destination.

There’s no airport on the Pitcairn Islands, so the only way you can get there is by boat, and boats rarely visit, so it’d be like playing Stardew ValleyIRL, except good luck getting some cows:

And here’s the crazy part – before you even board that boat, you’re going to have to endure around 24 hours of flights to make it to an island in French Polynesia called Mangereva, and flights only arrive there once a week.

And then you need to travel 531 km (330 miles) by boat to finally get to the Pitcairn Islands, and that will take you 32 hours or so. Oh and did we mention the only supply boat to visit Pitcairn only comes once every three months?

But that’s nothing when you consider the Kerguelen Islands, nicknamed the Desolation Islands, which are located in the Indian Ocean a whopping 3,300 km (2,051 miles) away from the closest other population centre in Madagascar.

Only scientists live here, and like the Pitcairn Islands, there’s no airport, so you have to arrive by boat, which only visits four times a year. But unlike Pitcairn, the boat ride will take you six whole days, even after you’ve made it to the remote Reunion Island, off the southeast coast of Madagascar.

If you’re looking for a challenge (besides actually getting there), the Kerguelen Islands offer one of the best.

As RealLifeLore explains, the islands harbour a 1.8-km (6,000-foot) mountain summit that will give you the most legit bragging rights ever if you actually make it up the top.

But you don’t want to get stuck in the same room as someone who manages to climb Mount Sidley – the highest dormant volcano in Antarctica that also happens to be in the most remote part of Antarctica – because their bragging rights will be so much better.

Only three people have reportedly made it to the top of Mount Sidley, and only in the past few decades.

But there are far more dangerous mountain summits out there, based on the number of people who have died trying – including the aptly nicknamed Savage Mountain, or K2. And that’s not even close to the most difficult place to get to on Earth.